Goanna

Goanna is the name for the Open Source layout engine as used in the
Pale Moon web browser and the FossaMail mail/news client.

What does Goanna stand for?

As the name (a group of carnivorous lizards most common to East Asia
and Australia) might suggest, it is a close relative to the Gecko
engine which it has forked off of, which in turn has been rooted in the
"next generation layout engine" that has been part of the Mozilla group
of products for many years. As such, it shares many features with
Gecko, although it is not a perfect match in how it behaves or what
tags it supports and in what way. Similarly, it provides the base
framework for the XUL language specification which will be maintained
in Goanna.
Goanna aims to adhere to the existing HTML and CSS specifications
closely, including following developments of the HTML5 draft
specification where considered sane and desirable.

Version 2.0 of Goanna can be found in Pale Moon 26, rebooting the
version number of the engine to something more manageable and clear than a direct
product-tied version, and will be updated as the engine is updated,
independently of the products used in.

Why the different name?

Mostly to prevent confusion. Gecko has started to be carried by the
Mozilla Group as being synonymous with the version of their browser of
the same version; from a technical perspective, this isn't really
correct to do and blurs the lines between framework/technology and an
actual product building on it. Also, the name was changed to no longer
be tied to something that is a
registered trademark (Gecko is) and our derivative code should not
carry it
anymore with its own, continued development by independent people
unaffiliated with the current trademark owners.

For a while, Gecko was adopted as-is (as a name) with continued
independent changes, to provide an indication of its general feature set
and capabilities, using
sub-version numbers as minor versions while carrying the major version
25, in line with the same (product) numbering scheme used by Mozilla
for Gecko. However, it had
become increasingly incorrect to do so: it was not a variant of
Gecko v25, and never really was. As it evolved, the need for its own
name and
versioning became more and more apparent, and so Goanna was created as
a name for the forked-off layout engine in use.

In addition it created the false impression that the engine, and Pale
Moon as a product, would be "an old (and outdated) version of Gecko" or
"an old (and outdated) version of Firefox", respectively, neither of
which are true.

Where can I find the source?

Goanna does not have a stand-alone source, since it can't be used as a
stand-alone library (maybe in the future, though...).
The engine is integrated in the Pale Moon
source tree, mainly in the /layout directory of that
source tree.

Goanna and the Goanna logo are a trademark ™ of Moonchild Productions.All rights reserved except where stated. The logo is Copyrighted.